Thread by @jwangARK

1/ No narrative is more tiresome and false than the idea that because companies are going public later, investors now have fewer choices and lower returns than a decade ago. It's the worst combination of hindsight bias plus laziness.

2/ First of all, it wasn't at all obvious that when the FANGs IPOed, that they would become the juggernauts that they are today. The IPO of Facebook/Amazon/Netflix/Google were just like any tech IPO today—filled with uncertainty and risk. Here's a brief survey.

3/ Facebook IPO in 2012 was met with tremendous skepticism. Many articles point out why you shouldn't buy: competition, it's a fad, no mobile story, terrible share structure, ridiculous valuation etc etc.
theguardian.com/technology/blo…

4/ Amazon's IPO of 1997 didn't feel like a $1 trillion company was in the making. Instead, it was a loss making online bookseller that was going into a price war with well capitalized incumbents. Not exactly a screaming buy. wsj.com/articles/SB859…

5/ Netflix's planned IPO in 2000 had to be aborted. Their 2002 IPO went by with barely any coverage. Would the average investor even have noticed or cared about a DVD by mail company?nytimes.com/2002/05/23/bus…

6/ Lastly we come to Google—perhaps the most 'obvious' of the names. The stock priced lower than expected, and still many regarded it expensive. On top of that, Microsoft—who was infallible up until then—was coming to eat their lunch. money.cnn.com/2004/08/19/tec…

7/ Yes, some companies are staying private for longer. But it doesn't not follow at all that the best opportunities are now excluded from the public markets.

Success is only obvious in hindsight—no analyst predicted $1T cap for APPL or AMZN at the IPO.

8/ Each year, more than a hundred companies go public in the US each year. The odds that one of them is the next Netflix is no different than Netflix's odds back in 2002.

The public markets are as fertile as ever. You just have to keep looking.